the lyrics are just an after thought Your observation reminded me of this quote, from a pretty good book about a pop-music group: Steered by their instant har

the lyrics are just an after thought Your observation reminded me of this quote, from a pretty good book about a pop-music group: Steered by their instant harmonizing, the duo's way of composing produced unusual moves that released a flood of catchy melody to which they sang dummy words or pure nonsense. Only later, generally speaking, did they fill in their lyrics - and then mainly phrasally, only bothering about overall concepts in formula terms (e.g. using the second or third person, aiming towards a sort of punch-line, and so on). Rather than tell a story in traditional Tin Pan Alley style, [they] wrote their lyrics to create a mood or a tone, so as not to get in the way of the effect created by the music and the sound. This bred a casual attitude to normal sense which later turned explicitly free-associational. There was always just enough sense in a lyric for the listener to get the general idea. The rest came from the sum of the parts of the record as a whole. [They] rarely thought long about their lyrics. This is, of course, about John Lennon and Paul McCartney in the 1960s. (Ian MacDonald, Revolution in the Head: The Beatles Records and the Sixties) This is how pop music has worked for nigh-on fifty years.